Communication systems of the kind described in the above-referenced application by Feigenbaum et al, permit processors attached to a local area network to act individually to adopt logical names for respective locally attached entities, and to initiate data communication sessions relative to remote entities by logical names. The name adoption and session calling process described in this reference require the initiating processor to broadcast a name checking communication over the network, and require the processors receiving such a communication to check the name against respective tables of locally adopted names. A processor performing this check, and finding a matching name entry in its table, returns an acknowledging communication to the originating processor. If the originating processor is performing a name adoption process, the acknowledgement causes it to reject the checked name and discontinue the adoption process.
Although this procedure for name adoption is quite adequate for many communication purposes, we recognize that it is useful in other circumstances to permit such communicating processors to adopt names already associated with other entities; specifically, this would permit distribution of information, in one signalling transaction on the network, to a group of plural entities sharing a common name. Such transactions, herein termed "multicasting", differ from conventional "broadcasting" techniques used in contemporary data communication networks. The latter networks traditionally employ a protocol for reception of signals sent in an ordinary broadcast form, which requires processing of the signal intelligence at all access nodes of the network, whereas "multi-cast" communications of the form presently contemplated would permit nodes to selectively process the signal intelligence if the accompanying non-unique or group name matches a local name table entry.
The present invention seeks to provide a method for enabling processors in the foregoing local area network environment to adopt names on either a unique or non-unique basis, which would in effect be transparent to the name adoption process described in the Feigenbaum et al reference, and thereby minimize the signalling traffic and processing loads added to the network for achieving such adoption.